About the Cover

details: Small Image of Rãgavidyiarãja (J. Aizen Myōō) in a Circular Shrine, Kamakura ca. 1292. Wood; cinnabar-red pigment applied to the background; bow-and-arrow of thin metal wire; dia. 3.2 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Partial and promised gift of Walter C. Sedgwick in memory of Ellery Sedgwick Sr. and Ellery Sedgwick Jr., 2019.122.6. Photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

On the cover of this issue of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies is a tiny circular shrine, barely three centimeters in diameter, with a sculpture of the Esoteric Wisdom King Aizen Myōō 愛染明王, also known as the Lust-Drenched King. The shrine was one of more than seventy dedicatory objects placed inside a small statue of Prince Shōtoku 聖徳太子 (574–622), who is known as the father of Buddhism in Japan. The statue, Shōtoku Taishi at Age Two, is commonly known as the Sedgwick Shōtoku, after Ellery Sedgwick, the owner and editor of the Atlantic Monthly, who bought the statue from a Japanese art dealer in 1936. Prince Shōtoku is the subject of countless legends about his life and religious works; the Harvard statue represents one of them. At the age of two, the prince "faced toward the east, placed his hands together in prayer, and uttered his first words of homage to the Buddha. Miraculously, at that very moment a tiny vessel appeared in his hands containing a relic of the Buddha Śākyamuni, his left eye to be precise."¹

The Sedgwick Shōtoku dates to around 1292, as do the artifacts within. There are two small carvings of Aizen Myōō among the texts and other articles discovered within the statue's interior cavity. Aizen (known in Sanskrit as Rāgarāja) belongs to the class of beings that protect the faithful and subdue evil—in this case by eliminating the obstructions to spiritual enlightenment presented by vulgar love. The presence of two sculptures of Aizen suggests that whoever commissioned the Sedgwick Shōtoku had a close connection to the monk Eison's 叡尊 (1201–1290) reformist Shingon-Ritsu 真言律 movement, for Aizen was Eison's personal deity.² The cover image shows, on the top, Aizen with weapons in his many hands and a bell and thunderbolt directly in front of his body. On the bottom is the shrine's lid, carved with an urn filled with cosmic jewels. Presumably, the diminutive shrine was intended to be carried on the person.

The Sedgwick Shōtoku and its contents were the subject of an exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums in 2019, Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within, curated by Rachel Saunders, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums. The exhibition website, https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/exhibitions/5756, offers a comprehensive introduction to the statue and its contents, including the Aizen shrine pictured on the cover. HJAS thanks the Harvard Art Museums for their kind permission to reproduce the image.

DLH